Public health grads honored at Tulane Alumni Awards
The Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine made a splash at the annual Tulane Alumni Association Awards Gala Saturday, with five graduates of the school taking home awards.
Dr. Sue Griffey (MPH IHL ’83, DrPH IHL ’83) was honored with the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine Outstanding Alumni Award, and Dr. Karen B. DeSalvo (MD/MPH ’92) was presented the Tulane Medical Alumni Association Outstanding Alumni Award.
Shelby R. Brown (BSPH ‘17) was awarded the Robert V. Tessaro Young Alumni Volunteer Award, while Dottie Reese (MPH '80) earned the Scott Cowen Service Award. Finally, Ellyn W. Ogden (MPH IHL '84) was honored with the Lisa Jackson Professional Achievement Award.
Griffey is a career strategist and founder of SueMentors, a global mentoring consultancy for people in career transitions. Griffey co-founded the mentoring program at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School in 2015 and has continued to mentor to this day. Griffey wove together her nursing career with public health education and program evaluation in global and U.S. settings as a program evaluator and expert in global development (including two decades living and working globally). She served as a vice president and senior evaluation expert at Social & Scientific Systems and JHPIEGO and is a recognized expert on professional presence and branding for global professionals.
DeSalvo is a nationally recognized physician and public health leader whose career has shaped healthcare delivery, policy and technology. She most recently served as the inaugural chief health officer at Google, where she led the company’s global health strategy. She further served as a professor of medicine and vice dean for community affairs and health policy at Tulane School of Medicine and as president of the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum and the National Association of Chiefs of General Internal Medicine. She has also served on the boards of the National Association of County and City Health Officials and the Society of General Internal Medicine. DeSalvo is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and was New Orleans’ health commissioner and senior health policy advisor to then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu, before joining the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
A dedicated alumna, Brown serves as president of the Tulane Club of New York and sits on the executive committee of the Tulane Fund Advisory Board. Brown is also a member of the GOLD Krewe Ambassador Committee and is the past chair of her second reunion. Brown is the senior director of volunteer services and donor relations at Met Council, America’s largest Jewish organization combating poverty.
Reese is the co-founder and principal of DMM & Associates in New Orleans, an award-winning consulting firm specializing in creating high performance organizations through human capital strategies. She is the president of the Allstate Sugar Bowl and a board member of the LCMC Health System, the Louisiana Women’s Forum, the Crescent City Chapter of The Links, Inc. and the Tulane School of Social Work Dean’s Advisory Council. She is also a member of the Loving Cup Selection Committee, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Convention Host Committee, and is a past board member of the LSU Board of Supervisors, the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, and the Urban League of Greater New Orleans – a group for which she served as chairman of the board.
Ogden has nearly 40 years of international public health experience with globally recognized expertise in polio eradication, infectious disease surveillance and designing and operationalizing outbreak response and immunization campaigns in a variety of settings, including conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas, spanning 25 countries. Ogden is widely known for pioneering a secretariat approach to localization through the development and implementation of NGO/CSO community-based immunization and surveillance programs for human and animal disease detection, control and response. Ogden was the worldwide polio eradication coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a senior technical advisor for health and child survival from 1997-2025. Concurrently, from August–December 2021, she led the newly organized USAID Emergency Operations Center and Country Support Unit for COVID-19 global vaccine introduction and scale-up. Among her various awards, she received USAID’s Award for Heroism in 2008 for her bravery in negotiation amidst conflict.
